| KAMPALA
The host of the Tonight With Andrew Mwenda Live talk show on 93.3 KFM
has been arrested and detained on charges of sedition.
Mr Mwenda
who is also the Political Editor of the Daily Monitor was yesterday
interrogated by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for at least
one and a half hours and later whisked off to the Central Police Station
(CPS) where he was booked for the night.
According to the
Monitor Publications Ltd Legal and Administrative Manager, Ms Anne Abeja
Muhwezi, Mwenda was questioned over his August 10 edition of the talk
show. Earlier on Thursday, the Broadcasting Council had shut down KFM
over the same programme and suspended the radio stations broadcasting
licence for allegedly offending minimum broadcasting
standards.
Mwenda, clad in a blue short sleeve KFM shirt, a
black pair of jeans walked into the CID headquarters along Sir Apollo
Kaggwa Road near Parliament at 3:43 pm after receiving summons earlier
in the afternoon.
Upon arrival, he joked to colleagues from
Daily Monitor who waited outside the gate, I have left my phone at
home, I have no belt, and I am ready to go to jail.
Accompanied by
Monitor lawyer James Nangwala and Muhwezi, Mwenda walked straight into
the office of Assistant Superintendent of Police Charles
Kataratambi.
Good afternoon gentlemen, I am here for you to
bite, to chew and to swallow. What are you saying? he joked upon
entering the office. Kataratambi replied, I am pleased you know how to
keep time.
Seated in the office was the Presidential Assistant
on Political Affairs, Mr Moses Byaruhanga, who was one of the guests on
Mwendas show on Wednesday.
Mwenda and Byaruhanga hugged and
exchanged pleasantries before the latter was led to another office
within the CID complex.
Shortly afterwards Kataratambi ordered
the journalists to stay away, saying only Mwenda and the lawyers were
required in the office.
Byaruhanga did not speak to journalists but
CID officials said he had recorded a statement.
Mwenda stayed in
Kataratambis office for close to two hours before the interrogation
began.
He was later moved to another office by the O/C Serious
Crime SSP James Habuchiriro where he was kept for one and a half hours
before he was later returned to Kataratambis office. Mwenda was charged
and cautioned for sedition under Section 50 of the Penal Code Act before
he recorded a statement.
Sedition is an utterance, which has the
intention of bringing into disaffection the person of the president,
the government as by law established or the Constitution.
A charge
and caution is a procedural requirement that whatever is said may be
used as evidence in a court of law.
Nangwala said before being
questioned and making the statement, Mwenda dramatically tried to
acclimatise himself to prison conditions by lying on the floor,
surprising the Police officers present.
Nangwala told Daily
Monitor that after Mwenda made his statement, Habuchiriro made several
phone calls before a gray Saloon car Reg. No. UAD 476R, arrived to take
him to CPS.
We were not told at any time that Mwenda would be
detained, Nangwala said adding, so when he was asked to get into this
car, we had to follow the car.
At CPS, which was in darkness due to
a power blackout, Mwenda was taken to the booking office where he was
booked in and later moved down a dark alley into a crowded cell in the
basement of CPS at 7:05pm.
Monitor Publications Managing
Director Conrad Nkutu described the detention as very unfortunate and
an excessive reaction from the government.
Nkutu said Mwenda had
walked himself to CID and they should have invited him to appear
again.
He said the law of sedition under which Mwenda was charged
does not have a proper place in a democratic state.
All countries
that respect press freedom as a pillar of democracy have removed from
their books laws that criminalise media offences, Nkutu said. | 
